Like Evita, we've been living a mad existence, and we're at the point where we need to fling open the windows to our grimy publishing house, and step out onto the balcony and into the sun. It's time to acknowledge this wonderfully warm Rag & Bone community that has been formed over the past six years (We love you 'and hope you love me!'). With each of the four books we've created there has been a massive journey in making them. It's hard to portray that in the finished product, and the warmth of the launches at the end only serve to remind us that we could have shared these connections all the way through.

We tracked our first book through a crude Tumblr-made soup van blog. But since then we've been so busy and the projects have wound up before we realised we barrelled through them without celebrating their beautiful inner workings. The total point of these projects is not just to produce a product at the end. The point is to create a living community that shares, suggests ideas, and builds on a community of people who seek to understand each other by telling their stories around issues as we go.

With that in mind, our balcony promise is to pursue a new phase of tracking and sharing. We'd like to incorporate the voices and ideas of our contributors more regularly and outside the printed book. We'd also like to revisit pieces from the past, and to invite our community to share their new work in salons and events held across the world. It doesn't matter if these books happen or not, but it matters if the journey to make them provides people with a forum in which they're heard.

So, welcome to the Barrow! A place to push ideas around, and to share them with the crowd.